


For With The Heart

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:34:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean fall prey to a curse that chains them together...literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For With The Heart

**Author's Note:**

> 1) A heartfelt thanks to alice_and_emma for being kind, talented, and friendly. It was a pleasure to work with them and to write for their beautiful art. Make sure you go and leave feedback at the art masterpost! 2) I can't give enough credit to yohkobennington and girlygothic for their beta work. This fic would be hopelessly incoherent without them. 3) Written for the 2012 spn_reversebang challenge 4) This takes place post-Purgatory, and I've made the assumption here that Cas gets out. 5) Title is taken from Romans 10:10: "For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."

In life, Carolyn Cutter was probably a loving wife and mother. In death, she’s a gigantic pain in the ass, and Dean was sick of this job two days ago.  
  
“The guns have rock salt, not bullets,” Sam says, all reasonable. Like you can reason with a ghost. “It won’t kill us.”  
  
Carolyn just gives that crazy-ass spirit cackle and cocks the gun without lifting a finger.  
  
“Sam,” Dean growls from the side of his mouth. “Not helping.”  
  
“If you have any better ideas, now would be a good time,” Sam hisses, imploring expression dropping away from his face. Jesus, Sam is scary sometimes.  
  
"You don’t understand. My family needs me.” Her lips part in a smile. It’s ghastly on her wasted face. Dean flashes back to the old photograph her husband had produced. She’d been smiling in the picture, sparkling green eyes and honey hair and an infant balanced on her hip. Nothing to suggest she’d been practicing witchcraft on her own time. No indication that she’d hold on and not let go when a traffic accident took her life two years ago.  
  
She’d written love notes in blood on the bathroom mirror, cooked breakfast overnight and left it cold and congealed on the kitchen counter. Her husband had looked decades older than his fifty years, and her son had been too shaky to even lift a glass of water. It had been too much like Bobby, too close a reminder of Bobby’s ghost going pale and vengeful. Dean feels his anger surge all over again.  
  
“Even if you kill us,” Dean says, “it won’t help you get your family back. You think you’re doing them a favor by sticking around? They’re  _terrified_  of you.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam says, alarmed. A round hits him square in the chest, slamming him against the ground before he even realizes he’s falling. Carolyn’s wasted face looms over him, layers of sorrow and fury blanketing the insanity.  
  
“You don’t know,” she moans, ghostly fingers on Dean’s cheek. Her other hand wraps around his throat, lifting his shoulders clear off the ground. “To leave what you love. To be parted. It’s the worst pain.”  
  
The things Dean knows about loss could fill this crazy bitch’s skull five times over. “Quit. Whining,” he forces out through the pressure around his throat.  
  
She trails fingers down his jaw, over his shoulders, and down his sternum. “It’s terrible,” she whispers. “It’s like having your heart ripped out.” A sharp pressure pierces him, slipping between his ribs. Cold fingers slide around the meat of his heart and squeeze, and everything whites out for a second. He can feel her cool breath against his ear, a low hiss. He can’t make out her words, but the tone writhes up his spine, sinuous in the way it circles his brain.  
  
“ _Sam_ ,” he chokes out through the agony. Just as he thinks his insides are about to explode, Carolyn rears back. Flames lick at her feet, roaring upward.  
  
She grabs at her hair, churning eyes never leaving Dean’s. “You’ll find out,” she wails. “You’ll understand.” The last bit of her flares out, and Dean loses consciousness.

  
*

  
It takes Sam an hour straight to clean all the rock salt out of Dean’s chest, and by then Dean is so far sunk in Jack Daniels he barely feels the pain. He shares his good fortune with Sam, grand and slurred.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Sam tells him, smiling slightly. “You’ll have plenty of pain to make up for it tomorrow.”  
  
“Killjoy,” Dean says promptly, but he can’t wipe the goofy smile off his face. One less witch to stain the world. One more Winchester victory. Sometimes he thinks he and Sam are really goddamn awesome. Really the best team in the whole goddamn world.  
  
“Uh huh,” Sam says, and Dean realizes he’s said the whole thing out loud. Sam is barely paying attention to him, stretched out now between two motel chairs. His laptop is glowing in the dim room, perched on miles of denim-covered legs.  
  
“Sammy? Job’s done. Time to sleep.”  
  
Sam looks at him, subdued in the blue light.  
  
“I will. Soon.”  
  
“Nothing to research,” Dean says, face half-mushed against the pillows. “Ding dong the bitch is dead.”  
  
“She put her fingers into you,” Sam says, which sounds dirty enough that Dean leers out of habit. Sam gives him an exasperated look. “We don’t know what she was doing. I just want to make sure she didn’t…I don’t know. Mess with you.”  
  
“I feel fine,” Dean says, the line between Sam’s eyebrows sobering him up more than he’d like. Sam waves him off.  
  
“Go to sleep. I’ll just look for a little bit.”  
  
Dean’s never been good at falling asleep while Sam’s still awake, but the exhaustion and alcohol are doing him in.  
  
“Mmm. Go get ‘em tiger,” Dean mumbles into his pillow. Through lowered eyelashes, he can see Sam shaking his head, mouth curving. Dean inhales the cheap motel detergent and sleeps.

  
[ ](http://sowell.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/3001/98561)

*

  
Pain wakes him, agony knifing through his chest and back, He shoots upright in bed, gasping and reaching blindly for his gun. “Fuck fuck… _Sam_!” he bellows. They missed something, they didn’t kill Carolyn after all, she found a way past the salt lines…  
  
Through the haze of pain, he sees Sam slumped against the door jamb of the bathroom, face leeched of color. His fists are pressed over his chest, mirroring the spot where Dean’s own heart is threatening to explode.  
  
Sam’s right wrist is circled in gold, shimmering unnaturally. There’s a thin chain stretching between him and Dean, delicate and mesmerizing. Dean looks down and sees the other end of the chain, latched to a cuff around his left wrist.  
  
Sam stumbles back toward him and, ever so gradually, the pain lessens. It leaves a dull, echoing ache, like the soreness after a cramp.  
  
“Goddammit,” Dean says hoarsely. “What  _now_?”

  
*

  
It takes them a while to puzzle it out. The cuffs shine like gold, inscribed with indecipherable swirls. The chain stretches like spider silk, lengthening as they move away from each other. They manage to put ten feet of space between them before the pain returns, sharp and burning. The further they pull apart, the worse it gets, until Dean can barely breathe, barely see, can only fold in on himself and gasp.  
  
They figure out they can get from the near bed to the doorway, but not all the way to the parking lot. It stretches from bathroom to table, but not far enough for one of them to sit on the bed while the other takes a dump. It’s a problem, because Dean is hung over enough to puke three times in the next hour, nearly dragging Sam into the bathroom with him.  
  
“Oh my god, I’m gonna be sick,” Sam says, face turned away from Dean’s sprawled figure. He’s a little green.  
  
“Wuss,” Dean says, and throws up again.

  
*

  
“Got to be a spell,” Sam mutters. “What did she say to you?”  
  
“Christ, I don’t know. Something about the pain of being parted, maybe?”  
  
“That’s it?”  
  
Dean gives him a baleful look. “I was a little distracted, what with chest full of rock salt and the cavity search.”  
  
“Great,” Sam says. “You had to go and say that thing about her family.”  
  
“I had to do something,” Dean snaps. “Your brilliant plan was getting us nowhere.”  
  
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay. If it’s a spell, there has to be a way to reverse it. We just need to figure it out.”  
  
It’s times like these that Dean feels Bobby's loss the most keenly. He didn’t realize until Bobby was gone how much they depended on him.  
  
They try everything they can think of to break the chain or remove the cuffs. A silver knife, coated in salt and holy water. Shooting the chain with salt rounds. Every incantation they know. Even just breaking the chain with their own strength. Nothing works. The damned thing just glows with an otherworldly light, mocking them.  
  
They find that anything attached to them – clothes, weapons, whatever junk food Dean happens to be shoving in his mouth at the moment – passes through the chain like mist. Anything else – walls, doorways, furniture – stops them short. They manage to knock over every lamp in the room and send each other sprawling at least twice before Dean gets fed up.  
  
“Screw it,” he says, frustrated. “I’m starving. I saw a diner a few miles back.”  
  
He’s halfway to the door before he realizes. The pain makes him stumble to his knees, deep and burning, pressing from the inside out.  
  
“Shit,” he mumbles, crawling back toward Sam. Blackness dots the edge of his vision.  
  
Sam is sweating, curled up on his side like he might hurl. “Just…quit moving,” Sam manages. “Before you kill us both.”

  
*

  
The car is a challenge; they both have to crawl in the passenger side of the Impala, and Dean almost unmans himself on the gearshift. The chain drapes lazily across their laps as they drive, glinting in the autumn sun.  
  
“So what’s our cover?” Sam asks, peering out at the restaurant. Suzie Q’s, the sign reads, lit up in neon blue.  
  
“Well, I was thinking we’d tell them we’re hungry, so we decided to go out for lunch. Plausible enough?”  
  
“I mean the  _chain_ , Dean,” Sam snaps. “Don’t you think our server might wonder why we’re chained together?”  
  
“Don’t sweat it,” Dean tells him. “I’ll just say you’re my idiot little brother and I have to keep you on a leash so you don’t get lost.”  
  
He ignores Sam’s clenched jaw and swings his way out the driver side, dragging Sam with him.  
  
It’s midmorning on a Tuesday, and the only other customers are three hollow-eyed truckers and a white-haired grandpa in a cardigan. None of them so much as glances at them when Sam and Dean walk in. Their waitress shows them to a booth and leaves the menu without a backwards look.  
  
Dean figures they’re all too weary to be fazed by two chain-linked brothers, but Sam leans forward. “Dean,” he says, hushed. “I don’t think anyone else can see it.”  
  
Their waitress returns with their coffees, and Dean flashes her a megawatt smile. “Thanks…Doris,” he reads off her nametag, and lays his forearm along the edge of the table. The chain drags brightly against the chipped plastic, gleaming in plain sight.  
  
“Sure thing,” she says with a wan smile and poises her pen over her order book.  
  
“Okay,” Dean says after she’s gone. “So it’s invisible.”  
  
They trade theories over coffee and toast and get absolutely nowhere. Their dad’s journal has a hundred examples of curses – blindness, lovesickness, fear, wrath, extra limbs, invisibility – but nothing about a golden chain.  
  
“What now?” Sam asks glumly. A little too glumly for Dean’s mood.  
  
“My god, perk up, grumpy,” Dean says. “Have you seen some of the curses in there? We got off easy.” Sam’s mouth turns down, and he looks away.

  
*

  
The first night Dean forgets and makes it halfway to the bathroom before Sam rockets upright, grabbing his chest in pain.  
  
The second night Sam somehow gets the chain looped around the headboard and yanks Dean clear off the bed.  
  
The third night they settle onto the same bed, curled toward each other warily. They’ve slept in close quarters before, but this feels different. It feels  _intimate_ , sharing a bed when there’s a free one just feet away.  
  
“No cuddling,” Dean warns, and Sam rolls his eyes.

  
*

  
They exhaust all their contacts, most of whom either laugh at them or refuse to pick up the phone. Between the apocalypse and the whole Purgatory deal, they’re pretty much  _persona non grata_  in the hunting community.  
  
They call Cas, who’s equally useless.  
  
“This is the work of a human, not a demon,” Castiel says, studying the glowing links with curious eyes. “You’ll need to find a human to undo it.”  
  
Sam finds a psychic on the Internet. The real deal by all accounts, although they’ve both heard that before.  
  
“ _Essie_?” Dean says. “What is she, a chihuahua?”  
  
It’s a two-day drive to Essie Mae Johnson’s home. They don’t call ahead; nevertheless, Essie Mae is waiting for them when Dean pulls the Impala down her long gravel driveway. She has a hand lifted to shade her eyes from the sun, and Dean can see she’s short and rail-thin with graying hair curling around her ears. She’s dressed in jeans and a flannel and looks like the grandmother Dean never wanted.  
  
She lets out a low whistle as he and Sam approach, wary and slow. “You boys got yourself in a pickle for sure,” she says. “Come on in.”  
  
They file through her front hall, so narrow and slanted that Dean has to turn his shoulders to avoid knocking pictures clear off the wall. The hall opens up into a dusty sitting room, crammed with shelves, knickknacks, and piles of old books. The whole place is covered in faded green wallpaper, geometric designs curling every which way.  
  
Essie moves toward an overstuffed armchair and gestures towards the matching one opposite it, across from a small table.  
  
”Sit,” she orders.  
  
Sam gets there first, throwing his lanky frame into it, and Dean is left standing. The next nearest seat is clear across the room, and he’s not about to risk another bout of agony just to take a load off. He plants his feet and tries to look slightly less awkward than he feels.  
  
“So I take it you can see this?” he asks, lifting his wrist.  
  
She sinks down in response, reaching out to touch the chain. Her eyes are ice blue, clear and sharp in the dim light of her house.  
  
“Isn’t that something?” she says under her breath.  
  
“What?” Dean asks, heart skittering. “What’s something?”  
  
“Never seen the like of it. Something got you good.”  
  
“Ghost,” Sam supplies, leaning forward. “What can we do about it?”  
  
“First things first,” she says. Her eyes flick sideways to a splintered board tacked to the wall behind them. It’s painted white and scrawled over with words and numbers. It takes Dean a second to realize he’s looking at a list of services and prices.  
  
“Oh for the love of – ” Dean starts, and then stops when she raises an eyebrow.  
  
“Curses,” she says. “Seventy-five.”  
  
“Fine,” Sam says impatiently. “Just, how the hell do we break it?”  
  
She leaves to fetch three glasses of sweet tea, and when Dean’s sure she’s out of earshot, he whacks Sam upside the head.  
  
“What was that for?” Sam asks, turning to glare.  
  
“She’s a hack,” Dean whispers furiously. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”  
  
“She can see the chain,” Sam reminds him. “If you’ve got any other bright ideas, I’m listening.”  
  
Dean sighs in displeasure and leans his shoulders back against the wall. The cuff is a little warmer than usual, like it’s absorbed the heat of his anger and turned it back against him. He wonders if Sam feels it too.  
  
She comes back in carrying a tray, which Sam jumps to his feet to take from her. Sam is the boy that every girl wants to take home to mom and dad, Dean thinks. Polite and steady and strong. Dean’s still not sure if he should be pleased or bitter that he’s the only one who gets to see the batshit underneath.  
  
Essie Mae gets to work while they drink their tea, testing the strength of the chain, dousing it in oil, throwing her cards. “Hmm,” she says when it stretches.  
  
“And when you walk away from each other?” she asks, looking right up at Dean.  
  
“Like knives,” he says. “Not fun.”  
  
“Hmmm,” she says again.  
  
She finally rises again, sighing. “Well,” she says. “You were right. You’ve got a curse on your hands.”  
  
“Yeah, we got that,” Dean says. “What do we do about it?”  
  
The corners of her mouth twitch the slightest bit. “Nothing.”  
  
“Excuse me?” Dean says, pushing off the wall.  
  
“What do you mean, nothing?” Sam asks, outrage and disbelief warring in his voice. “It’s a curse. There has to be a way to break it.”  
  
She shrugs. “Not this one,” she says. “It’s strong. It was either done out of great love or great anger. You said you vanquished the spirit?”  
  
Dean’s not sure why all the questions are being directed at him, but he nods. “Uh…yeah.”  
  
Essie Mae’s face breaks into a smile, stretching age lines into her pale skin. “That’s good news. It will fade. A curse can’t continue to exist once its source is gone.”  
  
Dean’s muscles relax under a flood of relief. He hadn’t even realized he was clenching so hard.  
  
“Great,” Sam says. “When?”  
  
Essie Mae shrugs again, still smiling. “Maybe a month,” she says. “Maybe a year. Maybe five years.”  
  
Dean stares at her for a beat, unsure he heard her right.  
  
“Wait,” Sam says. “ _Five years_?”  
  
She turns to Sam, eyes amused. “Maybe ten,” she says. “There’s no way to tell. It will fade eventually. The  _when_  depends on you and the strength of the curse.”  
  
Dean takes a step forward, feeling the tug of metal on his wrist. “What does that mean? Jesus, lady. Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”  
  
She looks entirely unimpressed by his rage. “Curses are alive,” she says. “They’re like a storm, not a solid structure. There’s no way to predict what will happen, how you and the curse will affect each other. You must let it play out.”  
  
He turns to look at Sam, at the dismay in his hazel eyes.  _Ten years_ , Dean thinks. Chained together, never alone. They’ll kill each other, or at least Sam will kill him. Even now, Sam’s face is pinching shut, mouth pressed tight, eyes growing murderous. He shoves a wad of cash into Essie Mae’s hand.  
  
“Thanks,” he says shortly, then strides toward the door.  
  
Dean turns to follow him, mute underneath his whirling thoughts. Ten years.  
  
Essie Mae catches him by the arm before he’s taken two steps. He looks, and Sam is waiting for him at the door, fingers drumming in an agitated rhythm.  
  
“The when depends on you,” she says, and Dean’s jaw clenches. “You mentioned,” he says. She shakes her head. “Not the two of you. You.” Her voice is low, for him only. On his arm, her slim, strong fingers curl. He freezes, caught by her fervent gaze.  
  
“The curse,” she says. “It doesn’t have the power to keep him.”  
  
 _Sam_ , Dean thinks, and can’t force down his jolt of panic. In his mind, Sam boards the bus for Stanford, shoulders broad and uncompromising.  
  
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. She’s watching him, steady and knowing. Her face is freckled and slim, youthful despite the age lines. She’s a weird blend of young and old, human and spirit, and Dean feels trapped under her touch.  
  
“What does that mean? What…” he stumbles a little, but it’s useless. He can’t stop the words. “What will?” he asks numbly.  
  
She smiles again, wreathed in wrinkles. She pats his cheek with a papery palm, then slides the cash back into his limp fingers.  
  
“I decided not to charge you after all,” she says. “Good luck.”  
  
“Wait a second,” he says hoarsely.  
  
“Dean,” Sam calls sharply. “Let’s go.”  
  
Dean trails out the door after Sam, fingers clenched around the wad of cash. He stands outside the passenger door for long seconds, staring down at the key in his hand. Sam has to shove him through the door to get him moving.  
  
“Sorry,” Sam says as Dean’s starting the car. “You were right. She wasn’t the real deal.”  
  
Dean tosses the cash into Sam’s lap, and Sam looks down at it, surprised. “You lifted it?”  
  
“She gave it back,” Dean says. He stares straight ahead, not moving. In the rearview mirror he can see her, watching them from the open doorway.  
  
“What did she say to you back there?” Sam asks curiously, and Dean’s heart pounds too quickly in his chest.  
  
“Nothing,” he says, and puts the car in gear.

  
[ ](http://sowell.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/3001/98103)

*

  
It’s not like the curse changes much. They’ve always lived in each other’s pockets anyway, stood a little too close, dogged each other’s footsteps. The only difference now is they don’t have a choice. The pain of separation is more than metaphorical now. They can’t move away from each other without that knifelike pain, and the further they separate the worse it becomes. Without fail he’s pulled back to Sam, no physical force dragging him, but magnet-strong all the same. It’s only when they’re in touching distance that Dean can really breathe.  
  
Dean figured it out right away, but fucking Sam needed to push it, of course. The first days are a hazy memory of pain, of Sam pulling further and further away, his face growing strained and white. Once, he made it a full fifteen feet before he collapsed. Dean had to crawl to him before they could both climb back to their feet. It’s like a hook in both their hearts, Dean thinks, tugging deeper and bloodier with each step.  
  
It’s not all bad. His little brother can’t hide from him, and as much as that pisses Sam off, it fills Dean with an almost constant flood of well-being. He only wishes it had happened years ago, when he was sixteen and Sam was twelve and had a bad habit of skulking off alone. He could have done with a leash back then.  
  
Still, better late than never. There won’t be any more demon fuck buddies, no more kidnappings, no more secret college applications. There’s nothing Sam can do that Dean can’t see, and he stops pretending to respect Sam’s privacy a week in.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says through clenched teeth. “Back. Off.”  
  
Dean squints at the computer screen. “What is that, a message board?”  
  
“It’s research,” Sam bites out. “And if you don’t stop breathing down my neck…”  
  
“What?” Dean taunts. “Gonna take a walk? Too stuffy in here for you?”  
  
Sam slams his hand down on the table like he’s about to stalk away. Problem is, there’s nowhere to go.  
  
“You know, this is perfect,” Sam seethes. He pulls jerkily at the cuff around his wrist. “If Lucifer wanted me in hell, he could’ve just chained me to you. No pit needed.”  
  
It knocks the breath out of Dean for a few seconds. When he finally manages to find his voice, it sounds a little rough to his own ears.  
  
“Good to know,” he says. “I’ll remember that for next time.”

  
*

  
Sam is a grabby sleeper, long limbs shifting restlessly until he finds something to latch onto. Dean half-wonders how Jessica put up with it. Dean fights it for the first couple of nights, extracting himself from heavy limbs and rolling Sam away when he can. The fifth or sixth time he wakes up pinned under Sam, he gives up. It’s weird – more than a little gay – but he can’t pretend it’s not comfortable. He wakes up tucked into Sam’s side, two sets of legs tangled together. Dean’s a pretty simple creature, and this – Sam alive and furnace-hot and clutching in his sleep – is enough to stave off the nightmares most of the time.  
  
Sometimes he wakes with Sam hard against his hip. Dean has to ignore his first instinct, which demands  _move flee fight_. Instead, he lies still and focuses on Sam’s beating heart, ignoring the answering heat between his own legs.  
  
They perch on the floor outside the bathroom when the other is showering, far enough away to afford some privacy, but close enough to stave off the pain of separation.  
  
Sometimes Sam takes too long, and Dean tries not to imagine what he’s doing, tries to ignore the hitch of breath and the busy splashing of the shower. Not much has changed, except there’s no way out now, not even an inch of space.

  
*

  
They spend two weeks getting used to their new situation, and then they start chasing cases again. The first time they try to hunt is a disaster, pure and unmitigated. It’s probably Sam’s fault, or maybe Dean’s, because Dean knows better than to let Sam get all… _organized_.  
  
Sam drafts up a plan of attack, and there are sketches and matrices and contingency plans and possibly code names.  
  
“It’s simple, really,” Sam explains, hands moving in sweeping gestures. “We just have to mirror each other. If we watch each other’s feet, make sure to stay within ten steps, it won’t be a problem.” He smiles at Dean, happy with purpose, and Dean has to work to keep his face impassive. Sam’s open smile is a little addictive.  
  
“No, really,” Sam says. “It might even make us better. You know, more efficient?”  
  
What they fail to take into account is that the demon can spot the damned chain at a hundred paces. When it sends Dean telekinetically flying into a tree, Sam is dragged along, too.  
  
In addition to his arm nearly ripping out of its socket, Dean has to deal with every bit of his breath pointing inward and stabbing him in the heart. He keens without meaning to, and from the corner of his eye he can see Sam, writhing and gasping in the dirt. The chain is pulled taut between them, a glinting trip wire.  
  
The demon uses it to yank Dean up, and Dean’s limbs flop uselessly. All his oxygen is caught somewhere in his throat.  
  
“Stupid,” the demon smirks at him, black eyes in a pale, pert face. “I’ve heard stories, but you Winchesters are really…. How you made it this far is a mystery.”  
  
It puts a hand around Dean’s throat and lifts, and Dean feels the chain tug as he’s pulled away from Sam.  
  
“Averted the apocalypse,” the demon sneers, “only to die in Minnesota. Daddy would be so proud.”  
  
Then Sam’s reciting the Rituale Romanum and the demon is spewing out in a rush of black smoke, leaving a dead shell in a miniskirt on the ground.  
  
“Great plan. Super,” Dean says, dragging himself weakly back toward Sam. Sam is on his back, chest heaving. “It would have worked if you’d followed my lead,” Sam replies without opening his eyes. Dean doesn’t bother to argue. His shoulder is funky and his legs feel all rubbery. He thinks he might never be able to breathe properly again. He probes at the shallow cut on Sam’s forehead, and Sam’s eyes open, muzzy and unfocused. “No more demons until we figure this out,” Dean says. Sam’s eyes fall shut again. “Yeah. Deal.”

  
*

  
They stick to hunting monster-type things: vampires, werewolves, shifters, wendigos. Things that are still partly human, things that can’t see the chain to use it against them. They almost die a few more times, but that’s par for the course. It wouldn’t feel right if they weren’t dodging death on a weekly basis. It takes a few jobs, but they figure it out. Dean learns the sound of Sam’s sneaker sliding in the dirt. He learns to judge Sam’s stride with his ears and the prickle on the back of his neck, and he starts to match Sam’s movements with his own. He swings left when Sam swings right, perfect mirrors of each other. At every job they leave arced tracks in the dust, a protective circle from guarding each other’s backs.  
  
Dean tries to shove that synchronicity into the rest of their lives, but the curse stops him every time. Sam has never done well in crowds, and now he looks at Dean like he’s being crowded all the time – resentful and cornered and itching for space.  
  
Dean ignores him at first, then takes to agitating him on purpose. Because if Sam’s going to be bitchy anyway, why not? And Sam is alarmingly easy to agitate these days. A well-timed tug on their leash earns Dean a glare; turning up Metallica over Sam’s complaints results in four straight hours of stony silence.  
  
Once, Dean drags them both into the back room of a club for a lap dance, and Sam glares, red-faced, at the ceiling the entire time.  
  
“Like a freakin’ virgin,” Dean chuckles on the way out, but Sam doesn’t rise to the bait. He crawls into his side of the car without a word, then slams the door so hard the whole car shakes.  
  
“No need to take it out on the car,” Dean mutters, and he sees Sam’s fingers clench around the seatbelt.

  
*

  
In Arizona, their waitress’s name is Alyssa. Her name fits, he thinks. She’s Alyssa Milano-ish, with a broader face and a bigger rack.  
  
“How come all the waitresses are so pretty here?” he asks as she sets a heaping slice of pie in front of him.  
  
“All of us?” she asks archly.  
  
“I don’t know,” Dean tells her. “You’re the only one I’ve been looking at all night.”  
  
She rolls her eyes, but her mouth is full and smiling.  
  
Sam kicks him under the table when she walks away. “What are you doing?” he hisses.  
  
“What does it look like?” Dean answers. The cuff sears his skin, so scorching that Dean’s surprised it isn’t glowing red.  
  
“You can’t take her home,” Sam says witheringly. He shakes his own cuffed wrist. “You’re occupied.”  
  
And Dean hadn’t really been considering taking her anywhere, but Sam’s sour face is making him reconsider.  
  
“Watch me,” he says.  
  
“Dean,” Sam warns through clenched teeth, and then Alyssa is back with the check. She lays it right in front of Dean, painted nails pinning it to the tabletop.  
  
“Have a nice night,” she says. Dean glances down and sees her number scrawled across the bottom. She looks back at him as she walks away, hips swaying.  
  
“Dude,” Sam says. “I don’t care if we’re living in each other’s pockets. I draw the line at watching one of your sleazy hookups.”  
  
“Better close your eyes then,” Dean advises, and pushes his way out of the booth. He’s resolved now, decided as much by the churning panic in Sam’s eyes as by the girl herself. He half-expects Sam to stay put, treat them both to a little dinnertime agony, but Sam scrambles after him.  
  
“Hey,” he says to Alyssa, and she swings around. “What time are you free?”

*

They go back to the hotel room, and Sam throws himself into the faded armchair.  _Sulking_ , Dean thinks, but not really. Because while Sam definitely has his sulk-shoulders going, his eyes are sharp and focused, following Alyssa’s movements as she shimmies out of her tight jeans. There are a million ways he could have put a stop to this already, and Dean’s not sure why he hasn’t.  
  
She looks over her shoulder, dark hair swinging. She has a rack like something out of Dean’s teenage fantasies, and he’s already hard against the fly of his jeans. She raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure your boyfriend only wants to watch?”  
  
“Not his boyfriend,” Sam says moodily, but his fingers twitch restlessly on the upholstery.  
  
“Just a friend,” Dean says with a hurried smirk, because if she hears  _brother_  she might head right back out the door, and then Dean thinks he really will kill Sam.  
  
“Whatever,” she shrugs. She climbs on the bed, smooth legs sliding against the comforter, and Dean leans forward to meet her mouth. She puts gentle pressure on Dean’s shoulders, and Dean goes with it, sinking back into the mattress. She doesn’t waste any time finding his fly, pressing lightly as she drags the zipper down.  
  
Dean can see Sam out of the corner of his eye, a silent mountain of hair and shoulders and burning eyes. He feels like they’re in some headlong game of chicken, porno version. Dean’s dick is too hard to want to stop, even with Sam’s eyes on him, and despite his stony face, Sam hasn’t pulled his gaze away yet.  
  
Dean shoves his jeans down his hips, and Alyssa rolls a condom over his sensitive skin. Sam follows the motion with his eyes, color bleeding slowly into his cheeks. His shoulders move with each jerky breath, and Dean sees his throat roll in a swallow.  
  
“Having fun?” Dean taunts, surprised how deep and rough his own voice already is. Alyssa crawls over him, pressing her breasts down on his chest. But he’s looking at Sam, even as his hips hitch up. “Fuck you,” Sam says heavily, and it feels like a concession. One point to Dean. Sam is pissed, face flushed and mouth pressed together savagely. Even through the dark, Dean can see the bulge in his jeans.  
  
“Already taken care of,” Dean answers, arousal and adrenaline twisting around inside of him. If he could, this is when Sam would leave. When he would get up and storm out the door. Just the thought makes Dean’s muscles tense. But Sam can’t go anywhere, and so he stays, staring mutely through anger and lust.  
  
“Feeling a little ignored, here,” Alyssa says, and Dean smiles lazily up at her, at the bright color in her cheeks.  
  
“Never, sweetheart,” he says, and puts his mouth against her throat. He rolls them so that she’s beneath him, legs sliding up around his hips. “Mmm, commanding,” she says breathlessly. “Very nice.”  
  
“We’re just getting started,” Dean assures her.  
  
Sam shifts, and Dean looks without even thinking, because he’s had his blood tuned to Sam since the night he carried him out of a burning house thirty years ago. He pushes to his feet, and Dean freezes. He’s not sure whether to brace himself for a punch or for the sharp slice of Sam walking away.  
  
Sam lumbers toward them instead, head bowed. He puts two hands on Dean’s shoulders, warm and huge. His pulse bangs against Dean’s skin.  
  
“What – ” Dean tries to twist around, but Sam keeps him there with a gentle pressure. “Go ahead,” Sam says roughly, and then Dean feels teeth on the back of his neck. He inhales sharply. The vague sense of victory sucks out of him in an instant.  
  
“Do it,” Sam bites out, a twist of arousal and anger. Dean can barely breathe because the fucking pressure of Sam’s hands on him. Just the touch of those two rough palms has him jerking forward.  
  
“Jesus,” he says. Sam’s tongue trails down the dip between his shoulder blades, thumbs pressing painfully into his muscles. Alyssa pulls at his arms, and he surges into her, bracketed by her thighs and Sam’s warm chest.  
  
He hears the soft swish of Sam’s shirt hitting the ground, and then he’s back, two hands smoothing down the backs of Dean’s thighs. Dean feels trapped, surrounded by flesh on all side, hyper aware of every swipe of Sam’s tongue, every brush of his fingers.  
  
If he were just a little stronger he could put a stop to this, but he learned a long time ago not to expect much willpower from himself.  
  
One of Sam’s long fingers slides down the crack of his ass, pushes in. It’s cool and slick with Sam’s spit, and Dean moans without meaning to. “I could kill you,” Sam says in his ear, taut and angry, and Dean breathes harshly at the torturous warmth of it. Sam presses another finger into him, so fucking strange and wonderful and  _Sam_  that Dean’s knocked sideways, blinded and aching. Sam is  _inside_  of him, and the realization spikes Dean’s pleasure even higher.  
  
Alyssa is making sounds under him, mewling and soft, and Dean scrapes his teeth against her jaw. No fucking way there’s anything in heaven that compares to this – his dick slid into soft warmth and Sam’s heartbeat against his back and Sam’s fucking hands splayed out across Dean like he owns him. Like he  _knows_  he owns him, and that’s the most terrifying thought Dean’s had in a long time. Three goddamn fingers now, pushing and punishing, and Sam’s other hand slides down to where Dean and Alyssa are joined, caressing. Dean focuses on staying conscious and not totally forgetting about the girl spread out under him.  
  
It doesn’t take long before Alyssa hits her limit, head thrown back and arms dragging Dean’s head down to her neck. Her soft little pulses all around him send him over the edge a moment later, and he bears down on her as he comes.  
  
Sam barely gives Dean a moment to recover. He shoves Dean over with a leashed sort of ferocity, mindless of the brunette curling up next to them. Dean breathes through a sated fog, feeling the way Sam covers him from shoulder to groin, sweaty skin and tense muscle and long, busy fingers. He shucks the used condom, licking and teething over every inch of Dean’s torso. He grabs Dean’s face, keeps him still and pinned for the swirl of his tongue over Dean’s throat. Dean feels like a colt being licked clean.  
  
“Dammit, Sam,” he starts weakly, and then Sam covers his mouth for the first time, hot and possessive. Dean can still feel how hard he is, covered in rough denim. This wasn’t what Dean had planned, wasn’t what he’d been aiming for. It had gotten twisted somehow, ended up so much better and so much worse than anything he could’ve imagined. The  _one_  way that he’d managed not to fuck Sam up, the  _one_  thing he’d kept normal for his brother, and Sam had dragged the whole ugly business out into the light. God… _dammit_.  
  
Sam’s hands are sliding down his ribs, thumbs dragging over every hard ridge. Dean hears the click of Sam’s zipper coming undone. He feels long fingers on his hips, tight on his flanks, lifting his thighs, and then…  
  
“Sammy don’t,” he says, panicked and instinctive. Sam stills, face hard and eyes glittering fiercely. Dean can feel him, the head of him nudging between his legs, beneath his balls.  
  
Sam’s mouth is white with tension, and his face is begging for something. Permission, direction, a way out, maybe.  
  
Dean watches him, breathing hard. Sam wants this, and fuck if Dean has ever been able to really deny Sam anything. But if they do this…that’s it. Nothing the same, ever again. Dean can feel his equilibrium spinning out, his world pulling at the seams.  
  
“Hey,” Alyssa says. She’s pulled back a fraction, watching them warily. “I’m not sure…”  
  
“Get lost,” Sam says, vicious, and Dean feels the guttural snarl right down in the pit of his stomach. Sam hasn’t moved, still suspended over him.  
  
“Listen,” she starts cautiously, and Dean finally finds his voice.  
  
“Go,” he says. “We’re done.”  
  
She shoves her clothes back on and is out the door in thirty seconds flat. Dean barely notices. Sam is watching him, skin blazing hot, hard and arched and ready. The door slams behind her, and Sam flinches a little.  
  
“Dean,” he says. Just that. A short question, pleading and shockingly soft amid the taut agony on his face.  
  
Fuck it. They’re already past the point of no return. If Dean never looks Sam in the eye again it will be too soon, but they’re here now. Sam’s arms are trembling, eyes searching, body about to shake apart from lust.  
  
“Come on then,” Dean says. He tilts his hips up, digs one hand into Sam’s shoulder, and pulls. Sam makes a grateful little noise and eases forward, ever so slowly.  
  
Fuck, it hurts. He’s all stretched and sore from Sam’s fingers, and he still feels like he’s coming apart. But this brand of pain comes with Sam – healthy and alive and clinging – and that’s something that Dean will happily put up with for an eternity. Sam fits right inside him, hand to glove, and fuck if Dean can’t stop thinking that it has to be some genetic thing. It’s blood, it has to be, for it to feel this freakishly right. Sam’s eyes are closed, the roll of his hips sure and even, the weight of him heavy and immobile.  
  
It hurts in all the right ways, and Dean finds himself dragging Sam forward with his heels, hitching himself up with a grip on Sam’s shoulders. He fists Sam’s hair, curses at the ceiling, leaves red welts on Sam’s arms. Sam snaps his hips forward, and then he’s there, coming sticky and hot into Dean. A little sound escapes Sam’s throat, and Dean licks his lips in time with the whirl of arousal through his stomach.  
  
He feels Sam settle onto him slowly, right into the mess, hand finding Dean and stroking quick and firm. It takes two, three strokes, and Dean comes all over him.  
  
They press together on the bed for a few exhausted moments. Dean’s vision is a washed-out haze, tiny spots still crowding the corners. Of all the fucked up things he’s done in his life, incest shouldn’t even register on his scale of sins, but it does. It _does_. It’s  _Sam_ , and what the fuck is Dean doing, letting everything get so out of hand?  
  
“Shit,” he says, and shoves. Sam’s face snaps to his, mutinous for a second, like he might not let Dean up, but then he moves. On to all fours, sweaty and sticky and naked as the day Dean learned to change his goddamn diapers.  
  
“Shower,” Dean mutters, settling himself onto rubbery legs.  
  
“Dean,” Sam says behind him, nervous and angry and still husky from sex.  
  
“Don’t,” Dean says. “Just – not now.” Sam trails him to the door – has no choice – and then thankfully lingers outside the bathroom. Dean turns on the shower as hot and strong as it will go, scalding away the last twenty minutes. He makes his mind blank, because this shit is too messed up for even the scariest corners of his psyche. When he emerges from the steam Sam has changed into new clothes. He’s slouched on the floor, bundled into a sweatshirt, head in his hands.  
  
“Shower’s free,” Dean says, and Sam looks up, eyes soulful.  
  
“Dean,” he starts, voice funny.  
  
“Shower’s free,” Dean says again, like a gavel in the silent room, and turns his back.

  
*

  
It happens again, which shouldn’t come as surprise, but Dean guesses he’s always been a little too much of an optimist.  
  
There’s another bar, and another girl, and this time she doesn’t even make it back to the motel with them. They slam through the door instead, grinding up against each other, biting at exposed skin, pulling violently at clothing.  
  
Sam pins him to the bed, face down, and Dean barely feels the pain this time. He’s not sure when he stopped wanting Sam’s company and started just wanting Sam, in any way possible.  
  
“It’s not okay,” Dean says afterward, when they’re face to face. The chain is almost a comfort tonight, tight and warm.  
  
“Then stop trying to pick up random chicks,” Sam says, and there might be laughter under his words.  
  
“If we weren’t going to hell already, we are now.”  
  
“Since when did you become such a prude?” Sam asks, raising his eyebrows, and Dean glares.  
  
“Not wanting to commit incest isn’t a prude thing. It’s a…not being fucked up thing.”  
  
“Too late,” Sam says. “Definitely for you, and probably for me."  
  
His voice takes on a richness after sex, low and velvety, and Dean can’t regret that he got to hear it before one or both of them kicks the bucket permanently.  
  
“It can’t happen again,” Dean says, and it sounds weak even to his own ears. “Once is fucked up, but twice…”  
  
Sam sighs. “Listen,” he say, calm and steady. Fucking robot. “We’re stuck until we get rid of this thing.” He shakes his wrist. “You tried the girl, it didn’t work. Maybe we’re stuck with this until we break the curse.”  
  
Dean feels his lip curl into a snarl. Something in him chafes at Sam’s logic, at the thought that all this might disappear when the chain does. For the first time ten years seems all too quick.  
  
“This is fucked,” Dean says again, in case Sam didn’t get the message the first time.  
  
“Either that or five to ten of jerking off in the shower,” Sam says, impatience creeping into his voice.  
  
“Dammit,” Dean growls, and Sam stops the rest of the words with his mouth.

  
*

  
Carolyn Cutter haunts his dream that night. She looks nothing like the ghost he and Sam ganked and everything like the photo her grieving husband had shown them – pretty and blond and apple-cheeked. Her green eyes flash at Dean, amused and alive.  
  
“I told you,” she says lightly.  
  
“Yeah, well me and Sam are doing fine,” Dean tells her. “Your little curse failed."  
  
“Dean, Dean, Dean,” she clucks her tongue at him. “You know this isn’t about the curse. How do you think Sam feels, now that he knows what it’s like to be really… _truly_ …stuck with you?”  
  
Dean’s frozen in the white dreamscape, feet rooted to the ground.  
  
“Do you think he’ll stay, now that he knows what you’re really like?” She circles him, stops too close to his ear. “You forced your own brother into fucking you,” she whispers. “He’d be long gone if he wasn’t chained to you.”  
  
“You don’t know shit,” Dean says, but his tongue sticks dryly to his mouth. He’s shaking, he realizes.  
  
“Sam  _hates_  you. The second the curse runs out, he’ll leave you and you know it.  _That’s_  what this is all about.” She breathes warmly against his jaw, and he shivers.  
  
“You’re not real,” he tells her, and himself. “This is just a dream.”  
  
“Maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true, now does it?”  
  
He wakes up, heart pounding, fingers clawed into the bed sheets. Between them, the chain breathes like a living thing, linking them together.

  
*

  
Six months into the curse Sam takes a knife in the stomach, and Dean nearly goes down with him. They hadn’t  _meant_  to hunt a ghost – it had just  _happened_  – and the thing had yanked on Dean to get to Sam, just used the link between them to gut Sam liked a fish.  
  
“You do  _not_  get to leave me chained to your corpse,” Dean mutters, shoving pressure down on Sam’s bleeding stomach. “You hearin’ me?” His own arm is sliced nearly to the bone from blocking one vicious knife swing.  
  
Sam’s face is sickly white against the grass, blood smeared across his cheek. He’s terribly still when Dean shakes him, pulse too sluggish and faint against Dean’s palm.  
  
They try to keep Dean in the waiting room at the hospital, but the chain pulls him along, inexorably stumbling toward Sam as they wheel him into the operating room. He levels two orderlies with his fists and a surge of adrenaline, and then he slumps outside the door, trying not to throw up. He’s too far away, and the chain is trying to yank his heart from his chest. Sam hasn’t stirred on his gurney, and Dean wonders if he’s lost too much blood to react to the pain anymore.  
  
He’s fucking up, he knows it. There are random hospital workers and security guards forming a tight circle around him, eyeing him nervously.  _Hide in plain sight_ , his dad’s voice warns in his deepest memory, but he’s fucking tethered to  _Sam_ who’s  _dying_ , and what the fuck is he supposed to do?  
  
There had been blood on Sam’s lips, coughed up from the inside. Sam could die, and it’s not like that’s anything new. But he’s wearing Sam like a purse, or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe if it happens the chain  _still_  won’t break, Dean thinks, and he’ll be stuck to Sam’s coffin forever, both of them wasting away together in some cemetery. Maybe that’s better than the other option, the one that doesn't include Sam beside him at all. This morning Sam was licking messages into his skin, and now…now….  
  
“Sir.” A doctor in fresh scrubs takes a step away from the crowd, hesitant and fidgeting. “You need to let me see to your arm before it gets infected.”  
  
“Fuck off,” Dean says, hearing how clogged his voice sounds. Flat and wrong.  
  
“You can’t be here,” she tries again, stepping closer. “It’s against hospital policy, and you could contaminate the operating room. You need to – ”  
  
Dean turns to tell them all exactly where they can shove their policies, but two security guards lunge at him from either side. Dean’s reflexes are dulled from blood loss, and within seconds they have him slammed to the ground, cheek against the cold floor.  
  
He thinks he’s thrashing, but he can’t be sure. There’s pain in his arm, pain shooting through his chest, and the weight on his back is suffocating.  
  
“Syringe,” he hears, and then a needle sinks into the side of his neck. His bones go watery in an instant, and he relaxes to the floor. Through blurred vision he sees shoes moving hurriedly, gurney wheels spinning toward him, and the knee of the guard keeping him pinned. The world spins as the drug washes through him, and then everything fades out.

  
*

  
“What are you doing?” Sam asks him.  
  
It’s not the real Sam; his dreams never manage to get it quite right. The monsters who’ve attempted over the years are even worse at it. Even Alistair never mastered it. There’s only one Sam, the one scuffed and molded under Dean’s hands, marked specifically and precisely only ever Dean’s.  
  
The Sam in front of him has the right hair and the right eyes, and everything else is all wrong. Sam turned away instead of open and blinding. Sam with a slight sideways cant to his shoulders, self-protective.  
  
“You’re – ” Dean starts, off-balance, but the Sam cuts him off. “What the hell are you doing?” it hisses again, and Dean realizes it’s accusing him.  
  
“Your stomach,” Dean says stupidly, because Sam’s shirt is stained red, dark and growing with creeping steadiness. “No shit,” it says. “I’m dying, thanks to you.”  
  
“No,” Dean says automatically, tongue thick. “It’s not – ”  
  
“Why are you doing this?” it asks, and at that moment, it’s almost really Sam - the frustration, the misery, the restless motion of his hands.  
  
“I'm not,” Dean says, taking a pleading step forward. “Sammy, I'm not. It’s not me, it’s…” He lifts his wrist, chain dangling. “I’m not doing this.”  
  
“You are,” Sam says, voice like ice. His shirt drenched in red now. It’s dripping from the hem. He lifts his own wrist, and there’s nothing. No cuff, no chain. Dean looks, and he sees the broken end of his own chain, swaying uselessly. A bitten-off lifeline.  
  
“You did this,” Sam says. “You have to fix it.”  
  
And then he’s gone.

  
*

  
There’s beeping when Dean comes to. He has a vague idea that there should be pain as well, but he’s all numb. Whatever sedative they gave him is still in him, and everything is coated in a weird film, muzzy and slow.  
  
“Sam,” he croaks.  
  
“Welcome back,” says the doctor from before, and her eyes are smiling but wary. Dean goes to rub his face and fails miserably. It takes him a second to realize it’s because he’s handcuffed to the bed rail. Not magical chains but cold steel, police issue.  
  
The other chain, the one that’s part of him, stretches out to his left. He turns his head to see Sam’s bed, wheeled next to his own. Sam’s got an IV in his arm and two days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks, but the beeping monitor tells Dean he’s alive.  
  
“You were assigned to separate rooms,” the doctor continues in the same even tone, “but every time we tried to separate you two, you both started thrashing around enough to hurt yourselves. That’s quite an attachment you two have, there.” Her face is placid, but she can’t hide the curiosity in her eyes.  
  
Dean wants to laugh. He can’t remember the pain, but his chest twinges with a sympathetic echo.  
  
“My brother…”  
  
“Is recovering,” she says. “The police will want your statement when you’re fully awake. You caused a pretty big commotion, throwing punches like that.”  
  
His brain still feels fuzzy and waterlogged, but he manages to pull a smile out of somewhere. Rote practice, probably.  
  
“Sorry,” he says, making sure he actually sounds contrite. “I guess I went a little crazy.”  
  
She studies him through narrowed eyes, uncomfortably perceptive. “Well,” she says finally. “I suppose family has that effect on everyone.”

  
*

  
The orderlies that Dean leveled don’t press charges, which is a damn good thing. Their fake IDs are pretty airtight, but no piece of plastic could survive a finger-printing. Dean would rather remain legally dead than get thrown behind bars for mass murder again.  
  
He waits three days by Sam’s bed, picking off his hospital plate, teasing a smile onto his pale face, putting his hand on his wrist whenever he starts awake, wild-eyed and shaking.  
  
On the fourth day they hobble out past the night nurse unseen and pile into the Impala with enough stolen painkillers and medical supplies to last a month, then head for Seattle.  
  
“Hippie state,” Dean says. “Easy to disappear in Washington.”  
  
Sam doesn’t so much as grunt at him, slumped against the passenger door. He should be laid out flat in the back, but the upholstery back there is still crusted in dried blood, and until he gets it cleaned, Dean isn’t letting Sam touch it.  
  
They hole up in a motel outside the city limits where Dean can hear planes soaring overhead with a soothing constancy. He’s fine listening to planes as long as he never, ever, ever has to set foot on one again.  
  
Sam recovers slowly. He’s always been a better patient than Dean, cautiously testing his own limits and never pushing himself too far. Dean pretends to look for a hunt and spends his time looking at Sam instead – the slow, deliberate movement of his healing body. His nightmare from the hospital plays on a loop through his head, Sam’s stomach slashed open and dripping blood.  
  
They successfully sleep in separate beds for two weeks, until Dean wakes in the middle of the night to feel the mattress dipping next to him. He rolls into Sam’s warm body.  
  
“Dude,” he says in sleepy protest. He can feel the bulk of Sam’s bandages under his t-shirt.  
  
“You can’t ignore me forever,” Sam says, breath warm against his ear.  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dean lies.  
  
“Bullshit,” Sam says. Dean slides fingers up and under Sam’s shirt, scratching in a careful ring around his taped incision. Sam makes a sound like he’s in pain, and when Dean looks Sam’s eyes are latched to his, alert and probing.  
  
He lets Sam roll him over onto his stomach, curls his arms around the pillow when Sam’s hands grasp his hips, lifting him. It feels familiar now, this thing that’s formed between them. It’s the last way Dean ever thought he’d have Sam, and now all he can think about is when the other shoe will drop. Later, when they’re both paying the price for this – Sam’s mouth on his neck, Dean’s fingers cupped back around Sam’s cock – Dean will wish he’d been able to stop it. All the years of training, all his dad’s lessons on self-control, gone to waste.  
  
Sam fucks him slow and deep, letting the friction build sweet and gradual between them. Dean bites his pillow and tries not to moan when Sam reaches around to jerk him off.  
  
They stumble dizzily into the clean bed afterwards, and Dean wishes he had the energy to walk away or shower or pour a drink or  _something_. Anything other than lying here and letting Sam study his face like a textbook.  
  
“Hey,” Sam says. “You’re not…I mean…You know this isn’t your fault, right?” He gestures vaguely at himself, and Dean’s not sure whether he’s talking about his stomach or the fact that they’re cuddling naked in bed together, but either way it doesn’t matter.  
  
“What do you mean?” Dean asks slowly, stalling.  
  
“I thought so,” Sam sighs. “Dean, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve gotten hurt on a hunt.”  
  
No, but every time it happens Dean swears it will be the last, and every time he’s wrong.  
  
“We can’t keep doing this,” he says finally. “We can’t hunt like this. It’s too dangerous.”  
  
Sam shrugs, bronzed skin wrinkling the sheets. “So we don’t hunt.”  
  
“Just like that,” Dean says flatly. “That’s okay with you? What are we gonna do, huh? Buy a house in the country?”  
  
Sam is touching him again, light fingers climbing the ladder of his ribs. “Or not,” he says. “Maybe we set up shop and help other hunters, like Bobby. Or maybe we get a job somewhere, go back to school… Anything’s possible.” There’s excitement riding under his tone, and it makes Dean’s back stiffen.  
  
“Not like you’ve been thinking about it or anything,” Dean snaps.  
  
Sam’s mouth tightens. “It’s just an idea. Would quitting really be the end of the world?”  
  
“Yes,” Dean says shortly. His brain is peppered with images of himself, watching Sam live his normal life from ten feet away, shrinking into nothing while Sam flourishes.  
  
“Nevermind,” Sam mutters. “Forget I even mentioned it.”  
  
“Hey, you want honesty, this is it,” Dean says. “Besides, don’t pretend you’re not gonna bail as soon as this curse wears off. You’ve been itching to take off for weeks.”  
  
Sam freezes, struck. Guilty.  
  
“That’s right,” Dean says belligerently. “You think I don’t know what’s going on in that giant head of yours?”  
  
“Dean, I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
“Damn straight. Wouldn’t let you anyways.”  
  
Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that. Sam’s eyes narrow, studying him. Dean has always been able to read Sam like a book, but Sam’s developed his own freaky mind-reading skills. Dean keeps his chin out and his eyes steady, refusing to budge.  
  
Sam doesn’t call him an asshole or challenge him or accuse him of being Dad. He props himself up on an elbow for an endless moment, mouth pursed. Dean feels pinned under his gaze. Then Sam blinks and drops back down on the pillows.  
  
“Yes you would,” he says, dismissive. Dean feels his whole body clench up, rejecting the idea.  
  
“Yeah?” Dean says. “What makes you so sure?” And dammit, he wishes he didn’t sound like he was asking for reassurance. It’s supposed to sound threatening, supposed to shake Sam out of his calm certainty. But Sam’s eyes are a settled and steady hazel, the corners of his mouth relaxed.  
  
“Because I’ve gone before,” he says. “And you’ve never tried to stop me.”  
  
“That’s…” Dean tries to think of a way to end that sentence. Different? Stupid? Shut up, Sam? Sam’s hands are on his face now, stroking gently across his bottom lip. It’s hard to keep his eyes open.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” he hears himself say finally. He’s closed his eyes after all, and everything is warm and dark, solid in his grasp for once. “We’re cursed. Neither of us is going anywhere.”  
  
Sam’s limbs tangle with his own, locked like a puzzle. In the back of his mind, he sees Sam’s face in the window of a bus bound for California, eyes latched to Dean as he pulls away. The memory is like a sense echo, the remaining ache of what used to be agony. The worst moment of his life, maybe, even in the whole shit storm of tragedy that came after. Sam wouldn’t have come back that time, Dean thinks, and maybe this time is no different. Sam can reinvent himself over and over again to find happiness, but Dean has only this: hunting and Sam. He thinks one of them doesn’t work without the other.  
  
He tries to make his brain picture it, Sam walking away again, back broad and duffel slung over his shoulder. Even the thought of it aches like a limb gone missing. He tries to picture himself stopping it, standing in the way, chaining Sam in some other panic room, binding him with guilt and death and need and…  
  
He can’t do it. Fucking kid brother is right. If Sam wants out, Dean will let him out, and then he’ll have to figure out how to live all over again.

  
*

  
There’s sunlight bleeding through the curtains when Sam shakes him awake.  
  
“Dean.”  
  
“Mmmmph.”  
  
“Dude. C’mon, get up.”  
  
Dean’s eyes fly open, sure there’s something after them. The cops, a ghost, Carolyn Cutter come back to finish them off…  
  
“Look.” Sam holds up his right hand, and Dean blinks. Sam is naked. Totally naked. No clothes, no underwear, nothing marring him but the tattoo on his chest, and…no chain.  
  
“It’s gone.” Sam’s wide smile practically splits his face. “It disappeared. It must have finally worn off last night.”  
  
Dean stares dumbly down at his own wrist, pale and chain-free.  
  
They look at each other for a second, wide-eyed, and then Sam scrambles out of bed, grabbing for his clothes. Dean wants to follow, but he’s frozen.  _Not now_ , his brain says. He’s not ready yet.  
  
“Okay, let’s test it,” Sam says, excited. “Stay here.”  
  
He backs out the door, and Dean watches him go, heart in his throat. He waits for the familiar slice of pain, but nothing happens. Outside, the gravel crunches under Sam’s feet.  
  
“Almost at the car,” Sam calls back to him, voice distant.  
  
Any second now, Dean thinks. He listens for the telltale rumble, for the slam of the Impala’s door and give of gravel under her wheels. Everything is silent.  
  
“Sam,” he says, sharp and sudden in the empty room. He can’t track Sam’s footsteps anymore.  
  
He takes a stumbling step toward the open door, panic bubbling up in him. Fuck, he let him go, didn’t even try to stop him, what the fuck is he  _doing_? He was clearly out of his mind last night.  
  
“ _Sam_ ,” he says again, louder. “Goddammit…”  
  
“Hey.” Sam’s face pops back around the corner, bright and broad and grinning. Dean’s relief almost sends him to his knees. “I went all the way across the lot and back. No pain. Dean…it’s really broken. It’s finally gone.”  
  
Sam hasn’t sounded so carefree in months.  
  
“Great,” Dean says hollowly, and Sam’s eyebrows snap together.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing. We blowin’ this popsicle stand or what?” He drags his duffel out from under the bed. His heart is still pounding too hard.  
  
“Seriously, what?” Sam asks, and Dean sighs.  
  
He tries for irritated. “It’s just – let’s not pretend, okay? You said it last night. Do your thing. Get out of here. Might as well ditch now so I can start hunting you down.”  
  
Sam has gone very still behind him. “I thought you said you’d let me go if I wanted.”  
  
Dean laughs bitterly. “Yeah, well I lied. So let’s get this whole thing over with.”  
  
“Dean.” Sam is right friggin’ behind him, and Dean refuses to turn around. “Dude, I’m not going anywhere. I already told you that.”  
  
Dean nods. “Yeah, well you seem a little too happy to be free, here.”  
  
He feels the broad press of Sam’s forehead against the back of his neck and two huge hands sliding over his shoulders. Little asshole is laughing.  
  
“Seriously,” Sam says, light and steady. “We just got free of a curse. Of course I’m happy.”  
  
Dean breathes, controlled and purposeful. Sam is Sam. He may leave, but Dean always finds a way to bring him back. Meanwhile, Sam is still fucking laughing at him, short huffs against his neck.  
  
“I don’t care,” Dean says finally. “Do what you’re gonna do.” It’s maybe the biggest lie he’s ever told.  
  
Sam licks the side of his neck, and Dean almost jumps out of his skin.  
  
“Damn it,” he growls. “What the – ”  
  
Sam hums against his skin, content and warm, and Dean can’t help but let his head hang forward, shivering.  
  
“You’re an idiot,” Sam says.  
  
“Just because I didn’t go to Stanford...”  
  
“You’re so fucking ridiculous,” Sam continues, the little stabs of his words a contrast to the soft pressure of his hands. “Would I have been fucking you for three months straight if I didn’t want to be here? Jesus, Dean.”  
  
“My fault,” Dean mumbles. “Forced you into it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says wryly. “You forced my dick into you. Makes total sense.”  
  
Sam’s hands slide up Dean’s back, and Dean presses into him, just a little.  
  
“That psychic,” he says, hearing the desperation in his own voice. “She said the curse wouldn’t keep you.”  
  
Sam shoves him down then, and Dean rolls over on his own, staring up. Sam looks mussed and turned on and happy, and Dean’s afraid if he speaks everything will shatter.  
  
“She’s right,” Sam says. His shirt goes up and over his head. “I never wanted this life. I hate the blood and the monsters and the running, and I hate watching you almost die every day. No curse could keep me doing this.”  
  
Sam crawls over him, and Dean closes his eyes, lost. “So?” he hears himself say.  
  
Sam settles on him so they’re pressed chest to chest like they haven’t been since Sam’s injury. Dean feels the tape chafing at his own stomach. “There’s one thing keeping me here,” Sam says, “and it’s not a curse.”  
  
“You tryin’ to make me guess?” Dean says around the little knot of pressure in his throat.  
  
“Nah,” Sam says. His hands dent the pillow on either side of Dean’s head. Dean’s heart is beating triple time, and the smile on Sam’s lips is doing funny things to his stomach. “You’ll figure it out.”


End file.
